Sil la vie est un cadeau
by Silverdamocles
Summary: I feel you you know......... during post withinwithout and AU after that. Mulder POV on his abduction and treatment on the ship and a special gift he wants to give Scully


Sil la vie est un cadeau by Truthwebothknow1  
  
Disclaimer: They belong to the surfer dude. No profit.  
  
PG For some strong imagery and language  
  
Spoilers: Within /Without AU after that  
  
Category. MT MA (major angst all round) MSR (not CD)  
  
Mulder POV  
  
Summary: You were right of course, as you always are, despite the times I teased you to the contrary. I'd leer and you would give me eyebrow and the banter would go on, like two well rehearsed actors in the play of love we shared. You were so, right, I shouldn't have gone, should never have deserted you when you physically needed me close by. You were sick and I hate myself every second of every day for being too blinded by the thoughts of my quest. Can you ever forgive me? Could I ever ask you? What was I thinking?  
  
I wasn't thinking at all.....  
  
Dedicated to my new friend Xtreme Unction : For your Inspiration, your kindness, friendly banter and wicked humor, most of all for your friendship. You make me laugh until I'm rolling on the floor. You are a rare avis, a gift , and a joy to know. Thank you!!!  
  
Always look on the bright side of life...and remember that all sperm is useful!!! The flying nun.  
  
I'M SITTING HERE INSIDE THIS STRANGER'S PLACE AND TIME IS RACING BY I'VE BEEN WAY OUT HERE FOR A MONTH OR MORE TONIGHT I'M WONDERIN' WHY YOU TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE THINGS THAT I FEEL MAYBE THIS TIME I'LL FIND AWAY TO EXPLAIN IT  
  
CAUSE THERE IS A DREAM DEEP INSIDE MY HEAD AND IT MAY SEEM LIKE IT'S BREAKING THE THREAD THAT HOLDS ME TO YOU STILL YOU HAVE NEVER WANTED TO CHANGE ME BUT DARLING I KNOW THOUGH WE'RE FAR APART THE SIGNAL IS STRONG THIS HELPLESS HEART WILL ALWAYS BELONG TO YOU... TO YOU  
  
Paul Brady (c)  
  
I Feel you, you know, like the diaphanous wings of a tiny moth inside my consciousness. It tickles, light as a feather, a fleeting, delicate almost subliminal feeling. You are in my veins, my capillaries that fill with the life affirming sensation that is you, your love; my terrified heart.  
  
But there is nothing fleeting about you. Nothing. I can feel you sitting there in the dunes by my childhood home, a place to connect, the last of the autumn sun shining through the wild riot of Ruby hair, that rise up like silk prayer flags around your face, tickling your cheek, catching in the tears that hang there like crystal drops in the light, as you watch the fury of the waves. Not a sign of weakness, like you might say, but of your strength. What kind of fortitude is this? I marvel at the way you carry on, carry yourself. You seem more than you were, larger than life, if what I go through now passes for that in this domain of dark terror. There's a new inner strength I can't define that belays your tears. An echo?  
  
There is something in my brain, Scully, they just...punched a hole and pushed it in. The pain...is indescribable. They did something odd, as the white noise kept me from scraping my medulla oblongata against the cold slimy Alien metal, but then you know its always been tilted at a peculiar angle. Now they tune me into you like the dial on an old radio, static and streams of discordant buzz come at me like a tsunami, and all I can think is that this might be why our connection is enhanced, although I want to believe that its our hearts, always entwined like that of Siamese twins; an invisible bond that holds us together now, always unending, tense and unbreakable. Stretching across the distance like millions of aching, humming tendrils of silkworms threads, rather than grant them credit for my ability to feel you now. Embodiment of love and soul that cannot be vanquished by evil dominions that hold me and keeps me from your side.  
  
I think I like it this way, our one sided connection. It doesn't seem to work both ways; although on some level I know you must sense me too, so used to our intimacy, that the imprints of what we mean to each other, are the indelible strands of sanity for us both. I feel your pain as much as, and outweighing my own, as your tears scrape against my heart. Its raw and open now, and it's too exhausted to carry on working, but does so despite my desire that that it should stop. Perhaps they control that too, this gift that they give me in their twisted Alien benevolence.  
  
I'm glad you can't see me, Scully. I would hate to see your beautiful face this scared; shocked and crumpled into a living caricature of pain, and hate for what they are doing to me. Despite the urge to give up, I cherish this respite from crashing loneliness, the chance to connect with you in some small way across the void and stars, perhaps for the last time. You are my only tether to sanity, my hope, the only damned thing worth breathing for, and they are slowly taking that away from me in tiny little increments. No eyes should see this; rather I strike you blind, than let those eyes that have always been a mirror reflecting back the love we shared, fall upon my pathetic living cadaver.  
  
I don't understand this advance form of Alien lobotomy, nor do I want to.  
  
You were right of course, as you always are, despite the times I teased you to the contrary. I'd leer and you would give me eyebrow and the banter would go on, like two well rehearsed actors in the play of love we shared. You were so, right, I shouldn't have gone, should never have deserted you when you physically needed me close by. You were sick and I hate myself every second of every day, for being too blinded by the thoughts of my quest. Can you ever forgive me? Could I ever ask you? What was I thinking?  
  
I wasn't thinking at all.....  
  
This isn't how I imagined it you know, all those boyhood dreams and adventure tale moments come back to haunt me now, the longed for joy of one day finding Samantha. My curiosity certainly killed this cat, my stupid egotistical brain fart that this whole shebang possessed a Hollywood ending of joyous catharsis, that a profound cloud of delight and happy tears would envelop, freeing me from my living hell, with a side order of candy floss and an 'Oprah' style reunion. Some vestige of doubt remained that I had once held Sam's apparition in my arms. I was never free, not then, not now. Those boys adventure tales disintegrate before me with each terrified heartbeat.  
  
What did I expect? I can almost hear your words in my head, and that alone brings a sad smile to my pain trembled lips. Your eyes like iced fire flashing indignantly at my folly, pinned here like a stricken insect on display, the accusation marred by the tearing of our hearts. Physically for me, ... emotionally for you.  
  
I think those words are there in your subconscious, Scully, raw and harsh, , they just can't cut through the weight of your tears. This isn't Hollywood, its not Star Trek. This is real, up close and personal horror, no kindly Mr. Spock with his philosophical cosmic karma and promises of 'No KILL I', this is my reality and you're not here. I won't live long ...or prosper. I boldly went...and fucked up.  
  
I can't even say I found Elvis, god knows I could use his music now to soothe my galloping heart.  
  
Words can't describe the duality of wanting you so badly, and yet knowing that you are safe...from this...and you are looking for me with every ounce of your being.  
  
This isn't Hollywood is it? Not even close. I idly wonder what Federmann would make of all this. Could he get the REAL flavor? This isn't even a Speibergesque feel good epic...and I'm not Roy Fucking Neary, I'm not like that lucky wide-eyed bastard, who walked into the nexus of light and group hugged the 'grays'. Hugging ain't their thing, Scully. Cutting, slicing, drilling...that's their thing.  
  
I'm naked, in more ways than you can imagine.  
  
I'm not the Close Encounter hero, but I'm close to something...terrible. I'm Fox William Mulder, the biggest sucker, the most colossal looser of all time. I am both found and at the same time irrevocably lost to you...to this. And I want...no need to think that I didn't have a choice, ...like Sam, that all this was inevitable for some universal goodness concept, which somehow got lost or derailed along the way. I made the choice Scully, but was it mine to begin with? Was this not ordained long ago by happenstance of my birthright? When I think of what I've cost you...  
  
Maybe I deserve all this; perhaps everything was leading to this, in some divine plan that was kept secret from us. Though I'm sure you would be the first to tell me that, God doesn't use power tools against helpless living flesh.  
  
So I am out here, all alone, in an alien sky, the far side, whatever you want to call it, far away from you my love, the brightest star in my firmament, because Fox Mulder 'phoned home' one damn time too many and ET reversed the charges, suspending his service indefinitely.  
  
I need you.  
  
I need you so much.  
  
For what its worth I'm so sorry. More sorry than you could ever imagine. I'm making this hollow plea with my mind and heart, because my lips are currently screaming in another galaxy, far far away.  
  
I can still feel you, Scully; I can sense every nuance, every little thing and every part of you everywhere, as if my consciousness is entwined with the molecules of space and time like I'm plugged into some giant plasma conduit, connected to every living thing, and the overwhelming rush is making my head spin and the veins in my arms stand up, like some manic creation from a Mary Shelley novel.  
  
The overhead light that burns my skin with its brilliance, makes it hard to open my eyes, but your eyes have a new home safe beneath my closed lids, and my heart takes a picture; storing it in the little fragment of me that isn't cut off from humanity.  
  
I feel everyone one of your tears fall through your trembling fingertips, their journey down your cheeks, making tiny circles in the sand as they land, and coating each particle like a warm breath, waning like every last drop of hope I possess into silent nothingness.  
  
Your spirit feels electric, and I will never give up the sanctity of this connection. I forbid it.  
  
Its' all I have.  
  
Ever stopped to wonder why you feel relaxed on a beach, Scully? The riddle of the sands. Each one on those minute facets is a crystal that draws and retains the life-affirming rays of the sun. Gazillions of little grains holding a charge in the confines of its structure, like the tiniest elemental pulse, waiting enticingly for you to stretch out with your Pepsi and obligatory Bodice Ripper, then bathing you in the collective effect of universal Nirvana, that kisses and caresses your skin until it makes you feel good and laid back; tranquil, at ease and inexorably loved by nature's osmosis.  
  
You don't feel good today, do you? I cry those tears with you, believe me; they mingle in the sand like a heady potion of regret, sorrow and paralyzing fear, stirred by the echo of my heart with each violent breath I take.  
  
Our Sun has gone down, Scully. Casting our lives in tragic tapestry of mist so dense, that you couldn't cleave it with an axe. Somewhere along the way the sun deemed us unworthy, denying us its beautiful nurturing benevolence from our existence. The only light I have to see by now, is the deep azure of yours eyes.  
  
You always kept a light on for me, didn't you Scully? Even lonely in your own nightmare, you let me in.  
  
My famous eidetic memory must be enhancing the effect somehow, on this intergalactic games console from hell. I'm getting a respite from 'Lord Darth's house of pain', because as your reach down to touch the sand, stroking and sifting the grains through your fingers in reverent awe, it's as though you're touching my fevered skin:  
  
I feel it....I ...feel it!  
  
....And I want to touch you back , my psuedo 'Jedi' spirit reaches for you but my strength deserts me, and it breaks my heart that I can't. I can't communicate to you that I feel your warmth, your soul, without the knowledge to understand this Strange phenomenon, this virtual reality from space.  
  
I can't fathom how they do this, but Scully, you are so close inside me; every cell and fiber, vein and artery is saturated with your life force, in that tiny part of me not descending into primordial sensitivity, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, a gentle hand calms the raging, kicking beast my heart has become.  
  
I am more than I was; yet at the same time feel like a breath snuffed out by flame.  
  
Nothing at all, no substance. So much for the 'Force, Luke.'  
  
THEY'RE HURTING ME, SCULLY,  
  
...And they keep on hurting me, lulling me into a false sense of security that my aching soul can no longer capitulate.  
  
On and on......  
  
Can you hear me?  
  
Dark clouds loom on over your haven in the dunes. Its thundering in your world so far from me; painting the sky in shades from a melancholy artist's brush, or struck from the tempest of an angry god, sobbing big fat rain drops onto your hair, making it kiss your face and reach for your eyes in the breeze. Not totally dulling its fiery warmth, but enhancing that wild look, you know always turned me on.  
  
The sudden wind that picks up and chills your skin, is the sharp gasp my lungs take at your beauty within the raw maelstrom of nature, and I'm reminded a 1000 times over why your soul holds me captive; your ever grateful prisoner.  
  
I feel you stand strong and proud, taking each sorrow heavy step in tandem with each beat of my heart, getting louder like the surf as you approach the waters edge; footprints casting weary indentations in the sand.  
  
The pulse you feel beneath your naked feet is my own, Scully. It's the only way I can touch you now, through this tenuous, otherworldly connection, of the elements, that parse through my every molecule. This frail body is their captive, but my heart has always remained in your safekeeping.  
  
Now I have a galaxy of fireworks all to myself. It's Labor Day, Christmas, and 4th of July with bells and whistles, all rolled into one. Too bad I don't have a cold beer and your arms to hold me, your laughter as we stare heavenwards, marveling at the spectacular light show reflected in each other's eyes.  
  
We are all star stuff at the end of the day.  
  
So here I am, anyway....  
  
..... Presiding over my blood red universe in a hack job, alien dentist's nightmare chair, like some Dustin Hoffman stand in, out of 'Marathon man'. Jeez, I'll never whine about root canal again.  
  
The wind that wraps around you is the longing in my arms; the raindrops that melt against your cheeks, my kisses, and the water that laps over your toes, my blood as they cut me stem to stern...  
  
The crack of thunder overhead is the capitulation of bone under spinning blade...  
  
I feel like one of your cadavers; a silent witness to the horror, my voice inexorably lost under the crushing weight of personal atrocity, till its pulled from me once more by something too terrifying to contemplate within my failing psyche.  
  
A howling wind I can't control reaches all points to the shore. The squeal that cuts through the roiling clouds fury, are the screams that break past from my throat as 'They' hold aloft my living heart, still warm and pulsing with its need for you. The thunder is my rage; a solid cacophonous monster that wants to crack open the heavens at this, the most profound of all injustices.  
  
They are hurting me....hurt....no...  
  
Scully....  
  
...My mind screams thunderous outrage across the vineyard shoreline like a wraith. My world turns red, as you physically stagger back from the white horses that reach for you from the waves.  
  
I was Jonah, Scully, an insignificant speck of humanity who fell into the Whale's mouth; ingested like a bad meal into the belly of insanity. Cocky and cavalier about my place in this great cosmic conundrum, I find myself in. I found serenity with you and should have been content. I'd give anything to turn back time, but it's the only thing I don't have software for on this deathly scenario I'm plugged into.  
  
Your gasp is the splinter driven into my mind, as it tries frantically to process the sensation of them dropping my nearly dead organ, back into my chest; but its stubborn and still refuses to be snuffed out; my love for you keeps the oxygen pumping at least, leaching through every last cell like an electric charge.  
  
...And your eyes blow up like a storm at the second thunderous wave that almost envelops you, feeling the palpable charge in the ozone all around you.  
  
I know I can feel you clearly now; your breath comes in tight gasps, in concert with my own fearful heaving  
  
The stars are just peaking through the depressed artist's canvas that is the early evening sky. If you look up.... right up now Scully, as I can sense you will, you might just see my eyes. Far away pinpricks of light that are swollen over with unshed tears, giving them the brightest shine you have ever seen. In that instant that melds us as one, I sense a sea change, your head pulling up in almost inexplicable recognition.  
  
In an almost imperceptible way, your fingers caress the sea-bleached shells at the shoreline, like treasures from Neptune himself, and I watch your eyelids close as if you can sense me almost. My blood, warm and deepest red, slick from this latest alien atrocity, mingles odiously on the ozone through the night air, and I can only watch your face twist into a disturbed caricature of your gentle beauty, at some terrible notion come to pass.  
  
One of those leaps of spooky logic that always astounds and confounds you, worm its way into the tortured recesses that double for my brain....  
  
I could give you a gift. I really could, I think.  
  
The powers that be, old ' lost-an-argument-with-an-18 wheeler face', to be precise, has left me alone now. The drills are silent, but maybe only for a few short hours and I can perhaps force my mind to expand past the agony, to boost the signal that I hold so dear.  
  
The tendrils thicken and energize, carrying its precious cargo across the galaxy like starlight a million years old. Deflected by white dwarfs, pulsars, bent into infinity on their journey to your soul.  
  
Your arms hug around your body, against the chill that buffets you, and I get the faintest feeling of being folded within your embrace, as a lost child would be. Or a lover reunited. Together we breathe: in and out, in and out,... like the only two souls left aware. In defiance of the wind and the turn of tide, like time itself.  
  
I think I see a spark of light in your eyes, a tiny quiver at the edge of your lips, as if you sense finally that I'm' close by. I'm really.... I'm touching,...I can almost...  
  
I'm almost ...there. Hold on...  
  
Sea spray dampens your clothing, just like my tears... My fear is the approaching fall of night; unstoppable, all encroaching, but the chords of life that connects us, strengthen and travel at the speed of a laser and pinball off that white star, guided by your faith. I feel however, the kind hand of Ahab guiding me to you, like it was meant to happen. I often wonder if he would have liked me...  
  
I am everywhere...and nowhere, with you, around you and touching every part of you, inside and out, with absolute clarity. Your life force feeds and sustains my human wreck, transmuting it to pure energy, need and force of will to be back with you.  
  
Clarity washes over me like the waves and I know I could move mountains now, sculpt the contours of the land, part the waves like Moses and reach out to take your hand as you tremble against nature. You are cosmic, Scully. Your fear is such a fleeting thing and the strength you possess, cannot be vanquished like a teardrop in the sand.  
  
For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky. Nothing can touch me now. I can halt the wind, anger the sea, whip up the fire you always instilled in me and walk through unscathed. I can beat the mind killer; I can touch you in ways I had never dreamed of before, utterly, and completely.  
  
.....And I will return to you. I know that as mightily as I know every freckle on your face. It's surer than my next calm breath. I celebrate the timbre of your wind chime laughter, the curves of your body, and your true heart.  
  
Our Truth.  
  
Its mine, this victory, I just have to reach out and touch .....  
  
"Mulder....?"  
  
Your anguished cry, snatched by the wind, almost stops my heart. For a few seconds, you stand lonely in the eye of a storm.  
  
Oh Scully..., don't cry. I meant to only touch your face again, feel your skin.. I needed that ...so badly. My wind blown kiss was too harsh. I see it sting your eyes.  
  
You need hope too.....you suspect... your mouth moves my name against your fingers in a silent whisper, too afraid to break the sudden eerie silence.  
  
I'm here, Scully. I've always been here. .... Irony hits me that you came to Martha's harbor to find me, when I was here all the time....oh I don't mean the Vineyard........right here ..Feel it?  
  
A warm breezes flutters up and around your shivering body, and your hands fly to your heart in a moment of perfect clarity. There.... Right there, Scully. I. Live here....  
  
I will never leave.....  
  
The storm now bereft of its unwieldy power, softens into an uneasy alliance with the waning sun. Thin laser shafts of golden brightness push the clouds aside like errant toddlers after a fight, touching down on your hair, and you look like you're aflame. Your eyes pick up the bright glare and look alive again, almost hopeful.  
  
When I think of what I've missed with you,..... Once again I curse the vermin that is Krycek; a thousand deaths could never be good enough for him. He belongs in a slime pit like this.........  
  
I belong by your side, and would trade with the devil himself to be with you now.  
  
My thoughts return to my gift for you. It's the only important thing. Every ounce of my conscious strength, my thoughts will be needed for this. I look into myself to muster ever last drop of stamina left to me, hoping that I won't come up wanting.  
  
I breathe in and out against the unending pain, clinging claw and teeth to our communion, as the now placid evening waves lap and shimmer over your toes like the caress of my eager mouth.  
  
Something catches your beautiful eyes, making their blueness dance like brilliant orbs of warmth and hope in the half-light, Lighting my way from the fearful purgatory of the alien ship.  
  
The tremulous waves give up their treasure at your feet, just as I would want to lay my life there. Like a moth to a flame you enclose one small hand over its surface, examining its strength and shape; touching it with one finger gently like a newborn baby's skin.  
  
My gift to you Scully, not the Hope Diamond, but even more precious, if you will, worth a thousand 'Kohinor's, forged from my love, my passion and all the energy I can muster from heaven and earth.  
  
When you were missing those 3 long terribly empty months, I was heartbroken....it left me as frail as a waterlogged kitten. A stiff breeze would have crushed me to a pulp. What kept me going was that little touch of gold, that you wore so close to your heart.  
  
That I lost this time....  
  
...Your cross.... your faith and eventually I realized, my own abstract version of it; but in those terms, I have no faith greater than what I have in you, your strength to continue the search for me. It's even more apparent now, that I realize I would not have survived a longer separation. My heart felted stoned...cut open...left bleeding into the excruciating normalcy going on around me...like a mocking voice I......  
  
If your mother hadn't given me that cross....  
  
I wanted to die back then, but like early winter snow, it never settled completely, and the numbness and chill took over until I was an automaton; the only way I could function to search for you. Yet I sense such thoughts have skittered across your own heart, but now only your resolve to find me, remains today. Here...  
  
.....So literally, through space ,time and Martha's ebbing tide, even though we use to often joke about our shortcomings as gift givers; my crappy Apollo keying ,aside.....  
  
I'm giving you a better gift now, one that's more appropriate than anything else I can offer, and says a million things more than all my Oxford educated prose could expound the feelings that I possess at this moment ...for you, or our hope, for us.  
  
This is appropriate now...  
  
Something easy to carry, to fit precisely into the palm of your tiny hand, to give you hope as I understand it right now. An elemental talisman and a tangible token of me, that you can touch, draw strength from, until I return to the safe haven of your heart, and the welcoming harbor of your embrace.  
  
Until we are partner's again in every sense of the word.  
  
To all that we are...and what we WILL be.  
  
I am starlight, Scully.........Hey G-woman, How often was I wrong? Old joke I know....but I'm am here with you, inside you; my eyes are open to the only truth now, as I look down to where you hold my gift. The waves at rest now, calmer that a mirrored surface. If you listen closely you can hear eternity.  
  
We are connected now in the profoundest of ways, in every breath, heartbeat, and ray of sun. In every star...  
  
Somewhere out on the rim... I am here and I will find my way home.....  
  
Take my gift, Scully and know that signal is strong.  
  
The truth is in me.....and I can see now...Oh god, Scully...m.....my gift to you on this lonely shore wasn't the first, was it. ..I. How could I have been so damn stupid?  
  
We created our own truth all along.  
  
Believe me, Scully, that I will return to you somehow.  
  
It's what I have to believe now. I do.  
  
I love you both.... more than I have words to express.  
  
...I know you will believe, God I'm so tired.....  
  
Rain bathes you in crystal drops, no longer cold from the wind, but warm, like my tears, they refract light from the opalescent treasure in your hand; it pulses now like my tired heart.  
  
Keep it ...keep it safe.... The wind whispers down.  
  
A rainbow stretches languidly across the sky, deflected in the crystal, painting your face in colored light,.... and you smile.  
  
Inquisitive sticky fingers enclosed around the bright shiny object on the mantle piece, where his parents kept their "special keepsakes". Two dark eyes alight with curiosity and wonder, marvel at the illicit prize, and dart about the room on alert, at the prospect of being caught red handed; at the same time, tottering on little legs trying maintain precarious balance on the footstall, that just gave him the extra height he needed to reach it.  
  
The boy, so engrossed by the rainbows dancing on the ceiling, shuddering with delight at the awesome effect; the next second, gasping as two very large warm hands clamp gently over his eyes, obscuring the crystal still cupped tightly in his shaking palms.  
  
"Guess who, Champ?" ... And the tinkle of love filled laughter fills his consciousness...  
  
As the crystal falls through his fingers with shock, one hand leaves his eye, making him blink, and he watches as if in slow motion, as the long fingers of his fathers hand catch it with ease of a base ball pro. His father laughs softly again and the boy erupts into giggles, feeling the other hand ruffling his dark head.  
  
His father stops to look at the object in his hand momentarily, never breaking the tender contact with his child, his other hand still resting on his shoulder. Time seems to stop and his father is as still as the sun warmed air in the room. He's gazing down the crystal and turning it over in his hands again and again; the lights refracting from the many prisms, now dancing a colorful jig across his handsome face.  
  
Wide brown eyes observe the quiet, as he sees a thousand different emotions, that at the tender age of five, he is too young to name, transform his father's features from sorrow, remembrance, to hope and finally to joy. When his own personal hero lifts his eyes again, they almost glitter; his smile is watery with unshed tears and they both let out the breath that each of them didn't realize they'd been holding, his tiny mouth forming into a "O" in wonderment at the notion that he might cry too, but can't comprehend why.  
  
The little flutter like worms in his tummy subside, as his father's mouth pulls into a full flashing smile.  
  
"Hey Champ....." He mock scolds, his voice uneven and jiggled, the boy thinks, like when his dad sometimes talks to his mom late at night, when they're in bed after daddy screams and has woken him; when he has woken in the night to strange and scary dreams himself, tiptoed with his teddy to his parents room, then peeped in to see if they are safe, and still there to love him, or when they make kissy faces and hold each other, and all the other little ways he's seen his parents love manifest between them, every day in a million different ways. He looks at his father now and feels that warm feeling inside again, the one mommy says is love.  
  
He blinks; his father is still smiling and only now feels inquisitive again about what his father is still holding in his hand.  
  
"Daddy, what's that?" His two huge brown saucers light up in childish wonder at his father's sudden wistful smile, that this time reaches what mommy calls his "Chameleon eyes."  
  
"Well William, " Mulder chest sucks in a huge ragged breath ...as Scully appears, spoons behind him, and places her own small palm over his fathers hand, that still cossets the crystal, gently rubbing his wrist. " 'A long time ago in a galaxy far far away............'  
  
The evening is falling and the last rays of sun paint the sky in golden splendor with last of the summer warmth.  
  
Two people huddle close in the Dunes that hug the Vineyard shore, their mouths move together in a tender kiss, as they try to get closer still under the blanket, bracing them against the late September wind and blowing sand spray, never taking their loving gaze from a dark haired little boy and his little sister laughing and tumbling in the sand, looking for crystals at low tide. .....  
  
The end 


End file.
